Archive for May, 2010

I’ve made a few improvements to the main website, in my ongoing fight to make it look good in IE, Firefox and all other decent browsers.

While doing this, I’ve used my Google Analytics reports to have a quick look at the visitor breakdown, in terms of which browser they are using.

Browser

Visits (%)

Firefox

35.6

Internet Explorer 8

29.9

Internet Explorer 7

12.5

Internet Explorer 6

8

Chrome

6.4

Mozilla

3.2

Safari

3.2

Opera

0.8

Playstation 3

0.4

Firefox and IE8 are the major browsers, getting almost two thirds of the total visits between them, it’s clear that these modern browsers are where most of the attention should be focussed on keeping the site looking good.

Chrome, Safari and Opera are all much less used, but with good support for standards the site should look good if it works in Firefox.

The use of older IE versions is more troubling. IE7 is not great, but has enough of a visitor presence to be worth devoting some time to. IE6 makes it hard to create nice looking sites, with only 8% of visits from this source I can afford to not spend the disproportionate amount of time I’d need to on this legacy browser.

For quick testing of sites I use IETester, allowing side-by-side comparison of all major IE versions, it’s very useful. Firebug is key to making quick improvements in Firefox, and you should use it if you do any web development.

I hope this numbers and the linked resources are of use to someone, it’s worth spending the time to make your website look good in the major browsers, it’ll be rewarded in more visits and your visitors staying for longer once they find the site.

I’ve played through Dominion a few more times since my original post, and have a few more thoughts to share.

I’m only using the basic set, with the original 25 action cards. Dominion – Intrigue, Seaside and Alchemy will have to wait for another time.

Big money is very strong when there are no attack cards in the set of ten you are playing with. Add in attacks, especially Witches and Thieves, and the value quickly reduces.

Witches are powerful if you are the only playing using them, they give everyone else a curse card, with -1VP, which is not only negative, but also pads out your deck, making each further draw difficult.

Cards that give further actions are good, but you need to make sure there is a decent plan to use the bonus, just chaining a lot of actions won’t help you win.

Remodel lets you change cards to new, more expensive ones, and there’s a valid strategy concentrating on this, but it’s easy to play it wrong.

Mines are useful to make your bad coin cards into much better ones.

If you are playing Big Money, then adding in a Chapel card can really help, thinning out your deck to allow quicker draws of your most valuable money cards.

Playing with random sets of ten cards is most fun, it stops you only considering your favourite cards, and avoids missing out on entertaining sets or combinations you wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Don’t play with random sets for the first game (unless you are teaching experienced gamers), but be brave and use one the second time around.